Microsoft president to Congress: ‘We accept responsibility’ for cybersecurity failures

By Sean Lyngaas, CNN

(CNN) — Microsoft “accepts responsibility for each and every one” of the issues cited in a scathing US government-backed report on the tech giant’s cybersecurity failings, Microsoft President Brad Smith will tell US lawmakers Thursday, according to his prepared testimony.

“We acknowledge that we can and must do better, and we apologize and express our deepest regrets to those who have been impacted,” reads Smith’s testimony to the House Homeland Security Committee. He is set to testify before the panel Thursday afternoon in a hearing the committee says will assess the impact of Microsoft’s “cybersecurity shortfalls” on homeland security.

Microsoft has been at the center of two sweeping hacking campaigns in the last year allegedly carried out by Chinese and Russian spies.

A report issued in April by the US Cyber Safety Review Board found that Microsoft committed a “cascade” of “avoidable errors” that allowed Chinese hackers to breach the tech giant’s network and later the email accounts of senior US officials last year, including the secretary of commerce. The board is comprised of government and private cybersecurity experts led by the Department of Homeland Security.

Smith says Microsoft has for months been overhauling its cybersecurity practices, in part by implementing recommendations from the US government-backed board.

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